After Too Many Killings, Police Departments Experiment with Safer Weapons

Knees bent and elbows locked, Christian Ellis stood in a swirl of gun smoke, clutching the base of a 9-millimeter Glock 17. It’s the same firearm carried by police officers across the country, but seconds before firing, Ellis pulled out an orange slide and snapped it onto the weapon. A metal sphere now hung in front of the muzzle.

When he fired, the bullet buried itself into the sphere, sending it hurtling toward a target downrange.

“It knocks the person down. It’s going to break some ribs,” said Ellis, chief executive of Alternative Ballistics, the maker of the device. “It’s going to feel like a professional baseball player swung a hammer and hit you in the chest.”

But it’s unlikely to kill.

After a year of controversial police killings that have inflamed cities across the country, police departments have embarked on an urgent search for new tools that can spare lives while protecting their own.